I feel like a lot of my posts are likely to have titles about mountains - I am very much looking forward to fitting in as many hikes as possible over the next few weeks. Glass mountains are of course a common fairy tale construct - impossible to scale, usually found at the end of a long journey, requiring magic or sacrifice to get to the top or, more usually, inside.
Today I was thinking about glass in a different context - a fairy tale I’ve been drafting that I’ve tentatively called ‘The Glass Princess’ (or ‘The Glass Prince’, I haven’t quite worked out my protagonist yet!). It’s one of those stories where I know how it starts and I’m fairly sure I know some of the main messages, but I‘m not sure yet what the central conflict is or how it resolves. Usually I have a solid outline of a story before I start actually writing it, but in this case perhaps I’ll just start writing and see where it takes me.
The main thing I want to explore in this one is the idea so prevalent in fairy tales that disability happens for a reason - perhaps a punishment or a sacrifice - and need to be ‘cured’. I’d love you to tell me your favourite fairy tale with a character with disability, especially if the disability is not ‘fixed’ or ‘cured’ at the end.
Characters with disability and beautiful girls are two of the fairy tale tropes that tend to cause irritating reactions from the ‘fairy tales are all metaphor and symbolism’ crowd. I love my metaphors and symbolism in fairy tales as much as the next person, but I am heartily sick of the idea that beauty is only shorthand for a character’s virtuous nature or that disability is only shorthand for a trial to be overcome. This re-centres able-bodied, conventionally beautiful people as the heroes of our stories, where anything other than that state is a temporary misfortune to be dealt with, while telling people who fall outside this narrow spectrum that their lived experience is a metaphor.
cafe - fallen log in the wilderness
No seriously, that’s my cafe for today. It serves ‘delicious leftovers cooked by my wonderful partner’ and has a view of more logs, also in the wilderness. It’s freezing but absolutely gorgeous and the tranquility can’t be beaten. 5/5